If you don’t know who Sean Locke is, you probably don’t visit many online, stock related, forums. If you do (any of the forums really) you are sure to have bumped into him. I feel Sean is one of the more helpful posters online, however his blunt honesty and lack of ‘secret sharing’ often make him come across as the opposite. Either way, he is a highly successful artist, ranked #4 on iStockPhoto and #1 on MicrostockGroup user rankings and has fine tuned his business strategy quite unlike his competitors. Happily, Sean has agreed to an interview, revealing all his trade secrets in the answers below
I started by opening an iStockphoto account as a buyer in 2004 and was contributing soon after that.
How did you get started as a microstock artist?
I had bought some background images for a home theater pre-show DVD I was creating. When I finished, I thought that I might be able to make my money back by licensing the work that I had created in 3d for some of the other backgrounds. The plan seemed to work. I soon found out that creating a good variety of 3d imagery was taking too much time, so a few months later, I purchased a Digital Rebel and then some Alien Bees lighting soon after so I could work with photo content.
Are you ever tempted to go non-exclusive? How long have you been exclusive?
Not yet . I’ve been exclusive since day 1 of the exclusivity program at iStockphoto, which was January 2005, I believe. I had to drop Shutterpoint to do it, which to be honest, wasn’t hard, as I don’t think I ever sold anything there. Partly because I think they were more concerned with signing up paying contributors than finding paying buyers.
How do you work, as in, do you have employees, do you have a full time / part time assistant, do you outsource any part of your workflow?
I do 100% of the work needed to get my content into my portfolios. I have found a college student that has helped me with releases and setup for a couple of shoots.
Essentially working on your own, how do you stay competitive against your competition, many of who have teams of 4-20 employees?
I try not to shoot the kind of content they do. For example, I rarely shoot “business teams”, which is a subject they tend to revisit. Repeatedly.
You keep your cards very close to your chest in regards to advice and trade secrets … that said, do you have any advice or secrets to share.. just a crumb?
See answer above…
Why do you keep your proverbial cards so close to your chest and how do you feel about those who don’t?
This is my business. I tend to treat my workflow, planning, strategies, etc. as my “trade secrets”. The whole package helps me succeed where others might not. I don’t mind sharing tips on “how to trigger a flash a certain way” or a specific keywording question or similar. However, providing a step by step training manual to what is, essentially, your competition, makes no sense to me. The entire world can see everything you post on the internet. You don’t know who is going to take what you provide and run with it. I’m at a point where this is what I want to do for a while, and I don’t want to endanger that by encouraging over-saturation from competitors. That’s one of my primary concerns right now. Others may be more concerned with the “compensation” they get from what they see as “doing a good deed” and helping others along. I think all the information is out there, and if someone really wants to find it, they can.
What does a typical work day / week look like?
I try to schedule 3-4 shoots a month. I mix that up with studio/location or people/objects. It might include a day doing some 3d work as a “shoot”. The rest is filled in with never ending editing and keywording. I’d like to be shooting more, but I also have a hard time trusting others to correctly do the processing work. When the kids are in school, I probably put in 40-50 hours a week. Plus, I tend to get up early for some reason, so I will work then, as well. Yes, it is work. Just because you work at home doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat it like a job.
You are one of the most active online people I know, how do you find time for it all?
I need a faster laptop. When I’m saving a file, I have plenty of time to go posting on forums.
How do you approach a shoot? How do you research / decide your topics and find your models?
I will both revisit old topics I may have covered a few years ago, and look for new subject that I think may not be over-saturated in the supply market. I get my models from various online sources, mostly, but I also built a modeling database on my website that models can create a profile with pictures and information on. I will pull from there from time to time.
Do you have any long term plans or goals with stock? Will you continue to experiment various types of media (audio, video, illustration)?
Likely, I will concentrate on photo content. The new IS redeemed credit system does not encourage being a “jack of all trades”. So I will strive to make the best photo content I can, technically and conceptually, that I feel the buyers might not have seen, or don’t know they want, as well as some good, solid, standard stock content. I really enjoy the planning and execution of a good photo session.
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Thanks Sean, great answers. I find it very interesting to hear from someone who is very successful in Microstock, yet doesn’t have a large team of employees or hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment.
Shutterstock has just announced a new tool for microstock photographers (and illustrators and videographers of course). A tool that could potentially help us know what styles of imagery to create and when to create it.
The tool works by comparing the search column of up to 5 keyword terms or phrases. If you type in the keywords [woman] [women] [lady] and [female] you can see how these words compare to each other and how they perform over time. In this example you can see that the keyword woman receives a much larger search volume that the other keywords and seasonal variation isn’t extreme. It appears there is a spike around Valentines days and one in October for some reason which could just be due to low data before January 2011. Shutterstock has mentioned that the data before January 2011 is based on a sample of searches instead of ALL the search data so unusual spikes may occur, especially for low volume keywords.
On the left side of the graph, Shutterstock has displayed each users’ most searched for keywords as well as the most searched for keywords on the site, giving some suggestions of fun keyword searches to play around with.
In order to protect some of their information, actual search volume numbers aren’t displayed on the graph. The scale of the graph will dynamically adjust to the search terms entered. Enter two crummy terms and the graph will hit the top just the same as two hot searches. The tool is meant as a comparison tool – month compared to month or keyword compared to keyword.
You are also able to search for multiple keywords at the same time. A search for [healthy food] will return results for searches that contained both healthy and food and not just the phrase “healthy food”.
Potential Uses
Shutterstock has expressed that their main intention with this tool is to give users an accurate picture of seasonal trends in search volume. With this information a user can shoot and upload at the correct times of the year. Looking at the example of [Mother] [Father] [Easter] [Halloween] [Valentine] it’s pretty clear you should have your Halloween images online by the beginning of August. Valentines shots should be uploaded in December, Mother’s day shots by February, Father’s day by February and Easter shots should be uploaded early January. I’ll leave the crazy Christmas spike as a surprise for you to discover yourself
Another fun use is seeing trending subjects due to general cultural popularity. Certain things are simply loosing popularity over time while others are gaining in popularity. Doing a search for [smartphone] returns a pretty obvious climb in popularity over the last year.
Suggestions for Improvement
I’ve mentioned this to Shutterstock already, but I would like to see a list of trending topics. It would be great to see which search terms have the greatest change in search volume within the last two years, year, month, week etc. Otherwise I feel this is a really great tool and it is great to see Shutterstock is giving tools to the microstock artists helping them create relevant material. Two thumbs up! Is there any improvements you would like to see?
DepositPhotos has just released a new ‘fancy’ search, which gives suggestions of popular searches when you start typing your query. Details in the press release below.
The Depositphotos stock image house introduces a quantum leap in its already powerful search capabilities, with new as-you-type search result tips. Enter a search term, and you’ll immediately see a window of related keywords, the number of images marked with each keyword, and a sample image. Buyers can narrow down their searches, and find the material they need even faster than before.
Not sure what keywords to use? Type a few letters in the search window, and the search result tips will complete your words, show you options and present you with keywords you might not have thought of. Looking for a specific photographer? Image providers are included in the search result tips display.
Depositphotos adds thousands of images every day to its stock image library, and continues to fine-tune its speedy user interface to meet the needs of its members. The simple keyword search is easy and intuitive, and advanced search options can limit searches by category, photographer and excluded keywords. But with the addition of search result tips, users gets keyword feedback, to help refine searches and more specifically target the images they’re looking for.
Since the introduction of photo-editing software, most lens filters have become obsolete. Filters, such as warming and cooling filters, are not required with post-processing software. Because photo-editing software cannot change how light is captured, a few filters are still required.
When researching for lenses to purchase, look at what filter size the lenses are; two popular sizes are 72mm and 77mm. Because filters can degrade image quality, high-quality filters are recommended to minimize degradation; high-quality filters cost around $100. Lenses with the same filter size will save money from purchasing several of the same filters.
Circular polarizing (CPL) filters deflect light as light passes through the filter. This will result in photographs that have little to no reflection of metallic surfaces, such as metal and water. In addition to eliminating reflections, CPL filters add saturation to photographs, famously giving outdoor images tremendously blue skies. Circular polarizing filters rotate, allowing the photographer to adjust the strength of the polarization.
Photographers use neutral density (ND) filters to reduce light. To facilitate motion blur, even with the lowest ISO and smallest aperture, photographers still may need to reduce light. Neutral density filters solely reduce light, leaving the image’s color unchanged. Frequent applications include pictures involving moving objects, such as rivers, oceans, and automobile traffic. Filters are designed by how many stops of light they block, ranging from .3-stop to 13-stops. The more stops on an ND filter, the more light that will be blocked, creating smoother motion blur from a longer shutter speed. Neutral Density filters are also used when a photographer wants to shoot with a wide aperture setting (f/2.8 for example) and there is simple too much light on the scene to accommodate the desired shutter speed.
A graduated neutral density (GND) filter reduces light for half of the filter. The filter is split between neutral density and clear sides, with a hard or soft edge separating them. When shooting against the sun, the photographer exposes for the sky or ground, but not both. The image will result in the ground properly exposed but the sky blown-out, or vice-versa. When using a GND filter, the photographer can expose for both: expose for the ground and use the neutral density half of the filter to darken the sky, resulting in a properly exposed image.
Photographers use ultraviolet (UV) filters to protect their lenses’ front elements; rarely do contemporary photographers purchase these filters to reduce UV radiation. Adding a UV filter can protect the front element in case of a collision. Ultraviolet filters, however, are not required because they are not used for aesthetics. Unlike other filters, which are only used in certain situations, UV filters can become expensive because most photographers purchase one filter per lens because the photographers always want their lenses to be protected. Any addition of glass between the scene and the camera sensor reduces quality. The advantage of protecting your lens VS a reduction in image quality is a heated topic among photographers.
As a microstock photographer, efficiency is the name of the game. There are many steps in getting your images from shoot to upload – and waiting for Photoshop shouldn’t be one of them. Here are a few simple steps to speed up Photoshop.
Edit > Preferences > Performance
The majority of speed settings are tucked away in Edit > Preferences > Performance.
Once you reach the performance settings, check out the following options.
Scratch Disk
If you have more than one drive on your computer, make sure your scratch disk (where Photoshop stores temporary files) isn’t on your main C: drive (where Photoshop probably runs from). If you have several drives, make sure your cache is also not on the drive where your images are stored. What I have done is purchase a small SSD drive and dedicate it as a temporary work drive (cache). I have set it as the cache drive for a number of programs – making the cache read and write speeds extra speedy. I also use this drive for temporary storage of miscellaneous files.
History States
The history states setting determines how many clicks and button presses Photoshop will remember. If you can handle not being able to ‘step backwards’ (ctrl+alt+z) very far, you can reduce your history states. 25-50 history states is probably enough for most people. If you are having a lot of speed problems, you could reduce this to 10 at the risk of loosing some undo power.
Cache Levels
The best cache level depends on your computer. If you have a fast computer, set the cache level to a high amount. As long as your computer can handle the setting, Photoshop will redraw the image (while editing) or create live previews quicker. If your computer has a problem keeping up with your edits, pull the cache levels down. Photoshop may draw slower by default, but you’re computer will be able to keep up to what Photoshop is asking it to do.
Cache Tile Size
CS5: If you are working on large images with few layers, put the tile size to a high amount, small images with many layers, use a low tile size amount. This setting determines how big of a ‘chunk’ Photoshop tries to work with at a time. CS4 and earlier: You won’t have this setting. Instead you have to head to Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Plug-Ins/Extensions/Bigger Tiles Inside that folder you should see the Bigger Tiles Plug-in with a ‘~’ in front of the file name. Enable the plug-in by taking out the ‘~’
RAM
The RAM setting is fairly easy to understand. Move the slider to the right and give Photoshop control of more RAM. Don’t move it all the way to the right though, the rest of your computer needs some RAM too. Leave at least 1GB for Windows and other programs to use.
Layer Thumbnail Previews
Photoshop shows you a little thumbnail preview of the layers you are working on. These take processing power to create and update. If you make the thumbnail shown smaller, or non shown at all, you will speed up Photoshop. You can adjust the thumbnail size by going to the layers pallet (press F7 if it isn’t showing), then click on the little arrow (menu) button, and select “Panel Options”
Restart Photoshop
That’s it. Now restart Photoshop and your speed settings should take effect.
Adobe has also written a fairly long guide to speeding up Photoshop which you can check out here. A long read, but worthwhile checking out if you are serious about getting the most out of the program.
Alternatively, if you like video tutorials more than text tutorials, you can check out a tutorial I created for TutorVid on Speeding up Photoshop.
and has fine tuned his business strategy quite unlike his competitors. Happily, Sean has agreed to an interview, revealing all his trade secrets in the answers below 
What gear are you currently using?
I try not to shoot the kind of content they do. For example, I rarely shoot “business teams”, which is a subject they tend to revisit. Repeatedly.
What does a typical work day / week look like?
How do you approach a shoot? How do you research / decide your topics and find your models?
If you have more than one drive on your computer, make sure your scratch disk (where Photoshop stores temporary files) isn’t on your main C: drive (where Photoshop probably runs from). If you have several drives, make sure your cache is also not on the drive where your images are stored. What I have done is 
The history states setting determines how many clicks and button presses Photoshop will remember. If you can handle not being able to ‘step backwards’ (ctrl+alt+z) very far, you can reduce your history states. 25-50 history states is probably enough for most people. If you are having a lot of speed problems, you could reduce this to 10 at the risk of loosing some undo power.
Photoshop shows you a little thumbnail preview of the layers you are working on. These take processing power to create and update. If you make the thumbnail shown smaller, or non shown at all, you will speed up Photoshop. You can adjust the thumbnail size by going to the layers pallet (press F7 if it isn’t showing),
